“One of the things about futility is many people will say, ‘Oh this is futile care,’ when what they really mean is, ‘Who in their right mind would want this?’ or ‘I would never ever want this,’ and that's different. That's not futile care. That's potentially inappropriate care. And sometimes that’s the big step for folks,” Lucia D. Wocial, PhD, RN, FAAN, HEC-C, senior clinical ethicist in the John J. Lynch Center for Ethics at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a discussion about futile care: how to recognize it, how to approach communication during difficult situations, and how to address a nurse’s associated ethical distress.  You can earn free NCPD contact hours after listening to this episode and completing the evaluation linked below.   Music Credit: “Fireflies and Stardust” by Kevin MacLeod  Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0  Earn 1.0 NCPD contact hours of nursing continuing professional development (NCPD), which may be applied to the treatment care continuum, psychosocial dimensions of care, or quality of life ILNA category, by listening to the full recording and completing an evaluation at myoutcomes.ons.org by September 15, 2025. The planners and faculty for this episode have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose. ONS is accredited as a provider of NCPD by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.  Learning outcome: The learner will report an increase in knowledge related to futility in care and how to speak up for patients and prevent ethical distress.   Episode Notes  Complete this evaluation for free NCPD.   Wocial’s Moral Distress Thermometer for Nurses   Oncology Nursing Podcast:  Episode 222: Ethical and Moral Dilemmas of Futility in Cancer Care and Treatment  Episode 78: Ethical Distress Impacts Nursing Practice  ONS Voice articles:  Moral Injury and Trauma in Nursing  Four R’s and Resilience Approach Help Oncology Nurses Respond to Morally Distressing Challenges  Sort Through Ethical Dilemmas in Medically Futile Care  When Do You Stop Fighting?  Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing articles:  The Ethical Dilemma of Medical Futility: The Case of Mr. X  Understanding the Moral Distress of Nurses Witnessing Medically Futile Care  When Does Treatment in Cancer Care Become Futile?  American Association of Critical Care Nurses moral distress resources  American Nurses Association moral distress toolkit  End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC)    To discuss the information in this episode with other oncology nurses, visit the ONS Communities.   To find resources for creating an ONS Podcast Club in your chapter or nursing community, visit the ONS Podcast Library.  To provide feedback or otherwise reach ONS about the podcast, email pubONSVoice@ons.org.  Highlights From Today’s Episode  “It’s a term that appeared in the literature back in the 1980s when it became clear that we had medical technology that could sustain people’s lives but not actually return them to a healthy state. And so, there was this attempt to try and identify and define when it was that the care we were providing, the treatments we were providing, could no longer work. And so, some people tried ‘qualitative futilities,’ some people tried ‘quantitative futility.’ People have been working on it for a long time, but the shortest definition is a treatment intervention that will not have its intended effect.” TS 1:52  “And first of all, it says futility is a definition that should be used sparingly. There are lots of times when a treatment may be considered what we call ‘potentially inappropriate.’ And when thinking about what's the difference between futility and potentially inappropriate? Futility is, it’s clearly n